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Saturday, 14 February 2009

#55 - Brecon Beacons, Wales

Another weekend in the Beacons; Arrived Friday afternoon in the fog, staying, for the first time, at Llwyn-y-celyn Youth Hostel. A great base for walking, with plenty of options right on the doorstep! The rest of the group; Graham, Tess, Jim and Diane, arrived throughout the evening.

Order of the Saturday was to get out early, find a route that gave some sort of a view amongst the unpredicted low cloud, and then head off into Brecon to make up the English contingent of the crowd in the pub watching the six nations rugby.

As it was, we headed up over Twyn-Dylluan-ddu to the roman road and started the climb up to Fan Frynych in the fog, map and compass firmly in hand! For my second time, there was no view to marvel at, but this didn't really matter, everyone seemed to be enjoying the snow on the ground. From the peak, we followed the wall along Craig Cerrig-gleisiad in search of a path heading south, but this had been lost somewhere in the snow, and we then found ourselves descending at a steeper gradient than expected. Not lost, I might add, but temporarily misplaced, which is a big difference! We reached the bottom, and then decided to take an alternative route back to the hostel, which turned out trickier than expected. Sometimes it's just easier to ignore the markings on the Ordnance Survey map and just head straight for your destination (assuming the ground in front is safe enough, of course)! Not a day's walk, in the true sense of the word, but good enough for the WGL log book.

We made the match in good time, and to tell the truth we were all expecting a bit of a hammering from the Welsh, but we were pleasantly surprised to keep the score "interesting". We even found the courage to cheer the 2nd try, but that was probably, in part, thanks to the beer!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Buck is a backpacker and Social Hiker, who loves to walk for fun and for good causes. Currently visiting all the tors of Dartmoor, accounts of that challenge can be found at moorlandwalks.co.uk. Adventures further afield are right here.